"Gordon R. Dickson - The Alien Way" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

Close now, approaching-though he did not know it-that fragment in a
vessel no larger than a thirty-five-foot motor launch on earth, came
another dreamer. A dreamer who had never breathed spring mountain air,
or the damp air of a Washington night, or any earthly air. Neither
stuffed and preserved study specimen nor human book nor neon restaurant
card could have spoken to him intelligibly. No birthday card would have
made sense to him, no signed check supported him, no brown bears' battle
stirred him inwardly.

Still-he dreamed also. He sat with his hands on a sloping table covered
with studs and switches. His hands, like his body, were covered with
black fur. But his flesh was warm. A vital fluid, driven by a heart-like
pumping organ, flowed through veins in his body, refreshed by oxygen
from an atmosphere that Jase also could have breathed.

His mind moved on its own desires. He felt heat, and cold, desires, and
fear, and the necessity of making decisions. There was courage in him,
and hope.

And now, approaching the fragment he did not know was there, as Jase
slumbered back in the humming stillness of his Washington apartment, the
other dreamer dreamed. A dream of a white palace with many levels below
ground but only three above in the light of a star he had not yet found.
And on the topmost level, the mothers of his sons, and his sons-straight
and strong and honorable and dreaming as he did then.

But it was a waking dream he dreamed. And it was the dream of Founding a
Kingdom.

CHAPTER TWO



file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20R%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Alien%20Way.txt (2 of 118) [11/1/2004 12:02:39 AM]
 file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20R%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Alien%20Way.txt

Therefore it happened that before the sleeper woke, Kator Secondcousin,
cruising in the neighborhood of a Cepheid variable down on his charts as
47391L, but which the sleeper would have called Ursae Minoris or
Polaris, the Pole Star, suddenly found himself smiled upon by the Random
Factor that all seek.

Immediately, for although he was merely a Second-cousin, it was of the
family of Brutogas, he grasped the opportunity that offered itself and
locked the controls. Before him shone his chance of Founding his
Kingdom. Therefore he planned carefully and swiftly. He fastened a
tractor beam on the drifting artifact presented by the Random Factor. It
was a beautiful artifact, even in its fragmentary condition, fully five
times as large as the two-man scout in which he and Aton Maternaluncle,
of the family Ochadi, had been making a routine sampling sweep of debris